


Fathers and Daughters, Bears and Wolves

by freshneverfrozen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshneverfrozen/pseuds/freshneverfrozen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character background story revolving around the Bear-Man's Daughter, Orla.  From birth and childhood to the moment she was cast out of her home by her father.  Not meant as a prequel to "The Bear-Man's Daughter" but rather as a glimpse into the events that shape and foreshadow Orla's adventure with Thorin and Co.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers and Daughters, Bears and Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: mention of underage sex (fully consensual, for all that it helps, I guess) but nothing explicit; teen pregnancy; and that which may be interpreted as abuse. This story is not intended to offend or to force upon you my personal feelings concerning any of the above mentioned triggers. It is merely intended as a character background.
> 
> I’m not sure about Tolkien’s world specifically but I established Orla’s background while keeping in mind the ostracizing of women back in the old days. That, and the fact that women often married absurdly young and started popping out babies sometimes before their mid-teens. So, please look at the occurrences that follow as an interpretation of what would have transpired in a time like this and not through the lens of modern laws. Note also that this is my personal interpretation of Beorn and his lifestyle based on Tolkien's "Hobbit" instead of how he might be presented in the movie.

Some say they came from the mountains, a people born of hard work and noble deeds.  Others said they hailed from the ancient bears of old.  For the youngest of the Beornings, however, she came from flesh and blood and love.  Throughout the Vale of the Anduin, a fertile land tucked between the Mirkwood Forest and the Misty Mountains, rich with life and legend as it stretched out from the shadow of the Misty Mountains, the Beorning folk celebrated the birth of their chieftain’s daughter.  Though their numbers were few and far between they all gathered round to hold the tiny child in their arms, to tug at the cotton-soft gold ringlets atop her head and smile into the milky grey eyes that blinked owlishly up at each of them.  As they would later discover, she would become not so fair as her mother but twice as good natured as her father.  For such a secluded group, the birth of Beorn’s daughter was as worthy of celebration as any holiday or solstice. 

Weeks passed after the baby girl’s birth and it was not until the first day of fall that a name was chosen for her.  Neither Beorn nor any of the other Beornings got their way in the end; it was the child’s mother, Gwealyan of Rohan, a woman come long ago only by chance into the Anduin, who chose the name.  Some said it was not suitable for one of their kind, too soft, not nearly fearsome enough.  But in the end, when Gwealyan had had her say, it was determined that the name was a good one.   

“I left my people and home behind,” Gwealyan had told her husband determinedly, “I’d see her allowed one reminder of her mother’s people at least.  She shall be named after her grandfather, Thórlan.”

And so, the Bear-Man’s daughter came to be known as Orla. 

A year passed, each day seeing Orla grow a little more.

The Bear-Man’s daughter grew up well and she grew up slow.  A quiet and thoughtful thing, ever content to listen to the comforting rasp of her mother’s low, soft voice, which passed into her ears as a hand does over velvet; or the boisterous rumbling sound that came from her father anytime the fancy struck him to unhinge that great maw of his.  Once, after her father threatened to spank the silence out of her, the usually tender Gwealyan had snatched him roughly by the ear, uncallused hands fisted roughly into platted black hair, and told him in no uncertain terms that he would never do any such thing; for what could possibly be punishable about having mind enough to hold one’s tongue and just _think_.  That advice, however sound it may have been at the time, would prove to not serve Orla well very far into the future, as goblins and orcs and other nasty things do not like women who refuse to be good and respectful and answer their questions.  But, alas, that is something different for another time. 

What little trouble the young Beorning got up to, she was rescued from by her mother.  As a mother lion snatches up her cub, Gwealyan would swoop Orla into her arms at the first sign of trouble from Beorn.  A bear he may be, yet fool enough to cross a woman he was not.   

Naturally, the occasional mischief happened – overturned honey pots, trampled flower beds, and emptied cookie jars being the least of her parents’ worries – but wherever trouble followed little Orla, good intentions were not far behind.  Honey from the pots was returned to the bees, for certainly it had been nefariously napped from them in the first place; flowers were thoroughly squished only after a game of tag with the resident bunny rabbits; and cookies that were meant to be shared somehow accidently wound up getting eaten before they could be delivered to friends. 

Beyond a doubt, Orla’s was, for all intents and purposes, a happy childhood.

It was not until her fourth winter that the first true tragedy struck her life, leaving in its gaping, malicious wake a child bereft for her mother and a festering wound that would never heal inside her father’s heart.  Gwealyan came down the sweating sickness that winter and before the first signs of spring came to warm the Anduin Valley from its predecessor’s chilled clutches, she had succumbed to death’s inevitable embrace.  Her honey hair withered to an ashen hue, dry from root to tip as corn stalks, and her body was laid upon the funeral pyre.  Her fair skin had curdled to the sheenless opacity of soured milk long before the flames engulfed her, burning away flesh and sickness but leaving pain to smolder like embers in the waning smoke.  Neither husband nor child would ever forget the warmth that would never come again; life became lonesome and cruel for one and for the other, it was an existence haunted by a ghost whose beauty and heart could never be matched. 

The pair made do with each other after Gwealyan’s death.  Love was not gone from their lives completely but it was a hard emotion to garner from Beorn and Orla sought it in her adolescence above all else.  Her father’s hand never fell against her and when his words descended on her, it was never entirely undeserved.  She was his daughter and he her father and there was an appreciated co-existence between the two.  

As best he could, Beorn made sure she learned of the animals and the land, that she had knowledge of letters, and that most importantly, she understood with the gravest clarity the significance of her birthright. 

“Be always wary,” he told her in that voice of gravel and stone, “as beast and as woman.  And above all, child, never, _never_ forsake the Mountain.”

Orla knew not what was meant by her father’s words.  Neither did she know that she would never learn the true meaning until the end of her life, when the Mountain finally claimed her back.  But death would be a long time coming for her and for nearly seventeen years it did not cross her mind a single time. 

The Bear-man and his daughter were content for many seasons, their lives spent tending their animals, working the crops, and harvesting honey and berry alike.  As is natural, odd moments either crept or stumbled into their lives every now and then to rudely disrupt the pleasant goings-on. 

Once, Beorn had been tending his bees, busy smoking them with one of his massive bellows, when his child wondered off.  For a good, long ways she skipped and hopped and tumbled until eventually she came to the edge of the Greenwood.  It was as fine a time as any for fun, she had decided, and the dense trees of the forest made for an excellent place to play hide-and-seek, even if one is playing by themselves.  There was no better way to play, of course, than as a wolf, since two legs got awfully boring after a while and four could be ever so much more entertaining. 

So, rather than a tow-headed girl in ragged britches and no shoes, the forest was given the chance to observe a little wolf pup instead, pluff ball of fur that she was.  Alas, wolf pups just like children get distracted easily and it was not long before she came across a grazing hart.  Majestic head bent to nip at the bounty of fallen acorns and long, brown legs sweeping gracefully with each step, the creature paid no heed to the curiosity of person and beast that was approaching.  It did not matter that the creature was easily five times the size of the pup because the wolf was going to chase it all the same.  It was with a great commotion that pup set after the hart but it did not take long for her to be outpaced, with the deer disappearing into a thicket not long after the chase began. 

The pup had been so busy running after the other creature that she did not realize until too late that something new and entirely unwelcome had grabbed her up.  Muzzle pressed uncomfortably into a green-clad chest and with a warm hand invading all manner of personal space, the wolf became all too aware that playtime had been unduly ended.  It turned out that this was something she did not like one bit, a realization that led to an admirable fight full of squirming and scratching paws. 

Whoever it was that held her fast to his chest made a point of murmuring reassuringly to her in a sing-song voice, one rich with the tones of the forest and smooth from never having been needlessly raised.  It made no difference, for the pup kicked and fussed in staunch opposition of any attempts to be comforted.  When something hair-thin and chewable came into contact with her snout, the pup knawed at it vengefully until it popped with frightening snap and dropped to the ground.  What was said next was not anything comforting at all and the wolf suddenly found herself being held at arm’s length, a single long, slender finger waggling at her nose.  Annoyed, she bit that, too. 

Not two minutes later, the wolf had been dropped down into the bleak depths of a brown, itchy sack that smelled of rabbits and fowl.  Yelping as she was tossed over a shoulder, she thudded unhappily against her captor’s back.  As loud as she was whining, it was no surprise when she heard – she did not _see_ anything, really, for she was still imprisoned – her father’s booming voice sound from across the pasture. 

“Hail, Beorn,” called the vagabond that held her.

“You there!” Beorn growled.  “You best have a damn good reason for bringing home my daughter in a sack.  Let ‘er loose or I’ll have your ears for earrings!”

Thankfully, the pup was promptly released from confinement, emerging wet-nosed and sniffling from the bag and into the arms of her captor.  He let her down and no sooner had her paws touched the grass did she change back right then and there into a little girl.   It was an elf who’d had her – actually, it was the Elf-king Thranduil’s son, as she’d later learn – and he stared down at her with horrified blue eyes just long enough for her to get a good enough look at him so that she might etch it into her memory, marking it as her first grudge.  A momentary quiver of her lip was all the calm before the storm to be had before pale lashes parted like a broken dam and her watering eyes flooded over to be accompanied by an undignified wail. 

It would take many encounters with elves to earn her good opinion after the disastrous meeting that day. 

It was little experiences such as that one that kept Orla’s relationship with her father colorful.  No matter the mischief she caused, he mostly forgave her at the end of the day as fathers should.  Whenever it behooved her fancy to wonder off, Beorn would track her down.  Naturally, he would fuss for a while, sometimes smash a pot or two, but the day always ended with dinner and a pat on the head goodnight. 

But good times like that, for better or for worse, can change as quickly as the weather, as Orla was soon to learn.

Even many years later, she would always recall the day when _he_ arrived.  She saw him first, riding up on his enormous grey roan mare and dressed in his ranger garb.  Armed from his nose to his boot soles, Orla had never encountered anyone like him.  She and her father received travelers every now again but they were few and far between – she would later discover that most folks preferred to go around the Bear-Man’s lands rather than pay his tolls and risk his temper. 

This man, though, rode right up to the gate.  Orla greeted him with a smile, not knowing any better, and he returned it.  She noticed that one of his front teeth had been chipped off at the corner but the damage made his grin no less charming.  With that smile and all his leather and knives, as she stood there watching him with hands on her skirted hips, she could only think him arresting at the very least. 

The stranger was a handsome man, his hair the color of coffee grounds and his eyes silver as newly forged steel.  Though he stood a good head taller than Orla, who was not so very tall herself, he was not a big man by any means – lean sinew instead of strapping muscle.  He had a hard face that was softened certainly not by the look in his eyes but rather by the dimples at his chin and cheeks.  Orla supposed she could say that he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, but she really had no one to whom she could compare him, so she honestly could not be sure.

“Hello there,” the stranger greeted her, leaning one hand against the gate post and keeping the other politely at his side as he inclined his head. 

Orla kept smiling, not really knowing what else to do, and gave him a shy nod in return. 

If he was put off by her silence, he did not show it; perhaps he was used to rendering women speechless or perhaps he just had not noticed.  Regardless, he continued, “I’ve come looking for the Chieftain of the Beornings.  This is his home, is it not?”

Her teeth barred momentarily at the unpleasant reminder that her father was actually rather nearby.  Again she nodded and shot a look back at Beorn’s hall, which stood not too far away, smoke puffing out from one of its chimneys as lunch cooked inside. 

“Ah…I bear a letter that I must deliver to him,” and he pulled said letter from his coat pocket, flipping it in his fingers so as to show it to her.  “It’s from my fellow rangers to the south, you see.” 

Waiting for further explanation, Orla looked a while longer, grey eyes having gone from marveling at him to looking curiously at the letter instead. Nothing was forthcoming, however, and she suddenly became aware that the stranger was watching her expectantly.  Gesturing at him to wait, for she knew Beorn would have her hide if she let this man inside the gate, she ran off to find her father. 

Beorn was bent over the kitchen counter, meaty fingers pressing well-practiced, precise little crescent shapes into an unbaked pie crust.  Catching him by the sleeve and pulling him away from the pies he was baking, Orla beckoned him outside.

The stranger spoke to Beorn for a long while.  Whoever he was, he was amiable enough that Beorn had not tossed him out by scruff of his neck yet; and when the conversation progressed into bouts of rumbling laughter, all seemed to be going almost too well.  After the man had departed, Orla asked several times what his business had been about though she never received an answer that night. 

It was nearly a week before the stranger returned and this time she learned that his name was Eragost and that he was of the rangers, one of the men who wandered, heard about but rarely seen.  His business, as it turned out, concerned the rangers’ desire to strike a deal with Beorn so that they might pass through his lands free of toll.  The rangers’ argument, which Eragost explained to a grateful Orla, was that the Alduin Valley and the Carrock were quick and safe for getting to one end of Greenwood to the other without having to go through the forest itself, providing for a distance safe travel in all directions.  Besides, Eragost had insisted, they used the route so frequently already that they might as well just come to some sort of agreement over it.  Orla was not sure what exactly Eragost considered frequently because she had never encountered any rangers that she knew of, but she did not argue. 

It took many more visits from Eragost to sway Beorn, something that was an accomplishment in and of itself.  It only took three, however, for Orla to become completely and utterly enamored with the fellow and he with her.  Eyes sparkling with recollection and lips always quirked in remembrance ill or good, he told her wild tales from his time as a ranger and of all the wonders he had seen. 

Orla had not intended to kiss him that third night after he had met with Beorn.  He certainly had not been the one to kiss her; honestly, he had seemed wary of the situation altogether.  Still, Orla had stood on her tiptoes and leaned across the head-width’s distance to peck him on the lips before she could think better of it. 

Things had not progress quickly after that, although the ranger had started coming round during the late evenings every few weeks or so, meeting Orla at the edges of her father’s land instead of at the gate or supper table as he had been doing.  The first night she had lain with him had not been magical but it had been pleasant and afterwards she had felt warm and comfortable, head tucked into Eragost’s arm while his fingers tugged fondly at her curls.  The second time was the last time and it had been better; he was ever so gentle as he taught her things that she would not truly appreciate until a while down the road.  There had been no earth-shattering moments that night either, though Orla did not expect any for she did not know anything about those moments at the time.  Again, she had spent the night happy and, if not quite loved, then cared for. 

After that, Eragost did not come round ever again.  It was a ranger whose name she never learned who showed up bearing the large bag of gold to which Beorn had agreed for the use of his land.  When Beorn inquired after the man he had been dealing with for past few months, Orla had been standing right beside her father, listening with keen and curious ears.  She had then heard the words the new ranger said, the sad story he told them about how Eragost and two of his brothers-in-arms had fallen during a goblin raid three weeks prior.  Orla cried for a single night afterwards to mourn her lover and after that she did not shed tears again for two months. 

It was only after she missed her bleeding time that she realized the weight of the choices she had made with Eragost.  For those choices, she wept for days.  What few Beorning women there were in her father’s chiefdom had taken pity on her.  They told her of the things she would need to understand and learn and warned her of the pain that would be coming.  They told her also of the joys that would come after the pain.  Her father, on the other hand, told her never to show her face again. 

He changed his mind a few hours later, seeking her out and ordering her home.  Despite his short-lived moment of forgiveness, Beorn remained withdrawn from his daughter as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months.  He rarely spoke to her and when he did, it was with sharp, bitter words that cut and eyes laden with accusation and disappointment that scalded the skin with each glance. 

When the babe came after nine lonely months, Orla screamed her way through the labor, thinking she might die, cursing Eragost, and damning herself.  But when the midwife placed in Orla’s quivering arms her newborn, the young woman decided in that moment that the boy was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  A throaty song of mewling melodies and gurgling choruses filled her ears as he clasped her fingers and kicked with healthy, strong legs against her breast.  She loved him more in that moment than she had loved anything in all her seventeen years.  Sweat and tears and blood mingled together as she pressed the babe to her breast and sobbed over him, the smile stretched over her lips bittersweet. 

The boy had not been quiet long, his wails having stopped as his young mother pressed him close, when the door of the room banged open.  The Bear-Man’s daughter knew well how prone her father was to rages, just as he was prone to moments of affection and laughter.  Beorn’s fury could come in an instant and be gone just as quickly, or it could shake the walls for days if he was in the mood.  Orla would ponder for many years if it was the delivery and the labor-pained battle cry that echoed through his halls for hours that sit him off or if something else, some last fleeting wish of his that went unheeded to return to life with his daughter as it had been. 

In two big steps he crossed the room, one massive arm sweeping out to shove away the protesting midwife.  His hands reached down for the babe and his fingers curled with surprising care around the boy’s tiny frame.  Orla’s arms were too weak to stop her father from lifting the newborn straight out of her grasp.

“The lad’s not yours to raise,” Beorn announced it as simply as if he were stating it over dinner instead of in a blood and sweat soaked delivery room.  Clasping the boy to his giant shoulder, he growled, “A child cannot raise a child.”

Oh, how Orla had shrieked then, madness descending on her just as a riptide pulls in a swimmer, dragging her without warning from sanity as the water might drag one from the shore.  Body wretchedly sore and breath still heaving in her lungs, she summoned every ounce of strength she possessed then and launched herself from the bed.  Beorn was near the door, the baby in his arms as he turned.  The midwife turned, too, sensing that the younger Beorning had shifted from woman to wolf.  Crying out, the elderly woman snatched the baby from Beorn’s grip with a quickness only skin-changers possessed.  It was just in time, for the Bear-Man’s daughter fell upon her father with a vengeance born of rage and hell. 

Snarling, snapping teeth closed hard not two inches from Beorn’s throat, tearing with incomprehensible fury until flesh had been rended bloody and stringing from bone. 

“Whore!” screamed Beorn.  “Traitor!” 

With mighty hands, he gripped the wolf tight round the neck and threw her off.  For all his great size the Chief of the Beornings was fast, faster than anyone his size had a right to be, and when he caught hold of the wolf again, he tossed her straight from the room.  Midwife and child cried out, screaming for the chaos around them to stop.  It did not stop, and it was not a man that emerged from the room but an enormous black bear.  With a roar that rattled bone-deep, the bear charged at the recovering wolf, batting her across the room with one sweep of his might paw.  Tables and chairs alike were overturned as the bear came at the wolf again.  She lunged at him, tearing with teeth and claw into the thick, black fur. 

He shook her off and with another sweep of his paw, he knocked her back.  The bear tackled the wolf and it was with deafening crack that the two beasts took the left half of the front door with them as they crashed through it.  For a moment both the bear and the wolf floundered, sides heaving and jaws bloodied.  The wolf could stand withstand little more, so outweighed was she in size and power, and with a shudder, a woman’s battered form replaced red-stained fur and paws.  Gasping and choking, Orla slipped a shaking arm under her body and pressed herself up to meet the bear’s gleaming, obsidian eyes.  He looked back at her and through the haze of the animal’s mind he saw and understood in that moment the hate that burned for him in his daughter’s blood-shot gaze.   

With one last frightening bellow, the bear was gone and Beorn stood once more in its place.  Fearsome, his blood-matted hair a wild black wreath around his head, he strode over to her and hauled her up by her golden curls. 

“ _Why_!?” cried the man, his gravel voice broken, shaking her til her bones rattled in his grip.  Kicking and screaming he dragged her through dirt and over stone until he reached the gate that shut off his lands.  There, he cast her out, slinging her into the dirt so that she landed with a rib-cracking thud. 

“Never,” the Bear-Man breathed, “return.  Turning on your own like a rabid _beast_!”  His last word was a scream, one fouled by anguish and heartbreak.  “The boy is yours no longer, may the Mountain take you!” 

And with that, Beorn cut off his daughter from her home and family.  The jarring slam of the wooden gate would remain a sound that resonated in her thoughts and dreams for years and the ensuing cry of denial that followed was a sound that she would not repeat for more than a decade. 

For the Bear-Man’s daughter would learn after that night that a world can be ripped asunder more than once.  Life and soul and limb can be stripped away ‘til only bloodied bone remains.  And with each cut, with every hit and bruise, one is beaten ever closer to their knees, driven into the dirt where nasty things crawl.  Dark things can fester in the fairest of souls when all hope has been lost and once those fair souls are broken, all goodness shall lie forever shattered at their feet.

  


End file.
